Missed this announcement back in December. John Maeda will take over as the president of RISD in June! Back at Carnegie Mellon I attended one of his lectures and came away disappointed and even though I've been having issues finishing his short book, The Laws of Simplicity, his CV is still pretty stellar and I'm sure all of design academia will look closely at how he affects RISD. Hope it won't just be a rehash of NYU's ITP. I don't think RISD has anything to fear since it has such a strong identity, they made it through Brown's era, who didn't posses a design degree; if anything they can just learn what they can from Maeda and boot him if things don't work out.

As a child, I collected pretty much everything. I think that's what made me into the pack rat I am today, though I've been getting better since I moved back to Brooklyn (when you don't have space, it kinda forces you to start dumping stuff). Way back when, along with my sports card collections, sticker collection, and comics, I also collected stamps. I went the whole nine yards getting the tongs and separating out the stamps from the envelopes my relatives would send from Malaysia. It was a pretty lame hobby and I don't think I did it for more than a year.

Fast forward to a year or two ago, Jammer bought the DC Superheroes stamp set from the USPS for me, a few months ago, I purchased the Marvel Superheroes stamp set and I thought that would be it. Now comes the Eames stamp set, set for release later this year. If I can't have the real Eames Lounge Chair, I shall have the 41¢ version.

I need a laser cutter. And a 3-D printer. But laser cutter first! Check out this take on the red-envelope package. Lunar New Year is coming up! And while paper-cutting isn't new, laser-cutting should definitely allow you to do some new things with it.

I'm usually so lazy about preparing food that I prefer to eat boiled eggs than fried eggs. That may change if UrbanTrend actually finds a distributor for the Gun Egg Fryers. I'd take an Uzi and some spam please.

Tim Gallagher is living every snowboarder's dream (jerkme@hotmail.com / bogustoyou via www.bugmenot.com, I hate these registration sites). Well I suppose it would be better if the house was actually slope-side, but 15 min. away from the slopes isn't an issue. As a total package, the house isn't very impressive. The massing itself doesn't seem to come from one concept, and that was the point. The house was dictated by the need to shield the inhabitants from its neighbors, and to open it up to the mountains as much as possible. The front entrance which draws your eyes through a narrow chute towards the mountain must be breathtaking when you stand there looking up. The bedroom windows also afford you plenty of privacy while framing a beautiful view of the mountains. Go check out the photo gallery!

Check out these photo skate decks with LEDs embedded into them. I've been wishing for snowboards with LEDs for a while, ever since I saw the fluorescent colors from the bottom of some of the Ride boards reflect off the snow. You know what would also be awesome? An OLED screen at the nose of the board. It would have GPS, show trails and where your buddies are, even give you the temperature and level of congestion at various lift lines. Come on Burton, you have the money to make it happen! You partnered on the creative side so far (Warhol, Kidrobot), how about hooking up with some tech companies? Those lame Burton Ronin Espionage jackets and Motorola team ups don't count!

The Ride Contraband bindings look like a simpler implementation of sister company, K2's Auto bindings. I imagine they would be lighter and less likely to malfunction. Color scheme might not be for everyone, but with the release of the new Batman movie later this year, it might spark a green and purple revolution. They're just forecasting ahead...

If you thought those bindings were ugly, check out these haute couture bindings by Balenciaga. At least they tried, I just can't imagine any ladies wanting to rock them, they aren't as sleek, low-profile, elegant as regular shoes... snowboarding equipment in general isn't very sleek.